Eternity Chain
by Caitlyn Collins
Summary: In the darkness, in his coffin, in nightmares, Barnabas remembers. And then, one night, a would-be jewel thief arrives… Originally published in 1977 in the print fanzine "The Deadly Triangle".


Awareness returned to him by slow degrees. Impenetrable darkness lay heavily about him. He twisted, trying to move, and quickly became aware of the confines of his prison.

A flash of faces... Nathan Forbes, the crossbow, the tearing agony in his chest... his father's face as he had asked for the relief of death... Millicent, slipping into madness...

Pain. He reached out once, then lay very still, letting it wash over him. He felt, rather than saw, the twin bars of coldly gleaming silver... the cross, affixed directly above him...

Millicent. Nathan. Joshua. The images faded, focused, slipped out of clarity again, and he went spinning down into darkness.

Time. Time, thick and heavy, like volcanic ash. An eternity of troubled nightmares, of awareness that rose and faded in spurts of pain and aloneness. The dark between, and the shadowed crystal images that were there' and were gone, and he never could summon nor dispel them... Josette, as he had first known her, her lovely face alive, her beautiful form surrounded by the riot of flowers on Martinique; brilliant splashes of color which, try as he might to retain them, always faded to black and white... Josette, as he had last seen her, her broken body straightened grotesquely, in agony as she had responded to his summons and broken free of her grave, to walk, step after halting step, through the cemetery, the forest, into the house and up the stairs to say goodbye in her old room.

Childhood memories of the troubled times during the War, of the carefree days of youth, of mock battles with his regiment of tin soldiers facing the opposing army that Jeremiah commanded... Jeremiah, his brother in all but reality... gravestone... 'Here lies Jeremiah'… deathhead figure guardian; his uncle dead by his own hand... Naomi... his mother as she comforted him during a long childhood illness... her lovely face delighted with a gift of simple forest flowers… her face, now bearing the strains of age and the drink which destroyed her by slow degrees, as she lay dying in his arms, victim of her love for him... Joshua... his father, stern, harsh figure for all of his life... and the anguish in his face as he learned the truth about his only son.

And Angelique, beautiful like the flashing flames, and just as deadly... her blood on his hands, and his on hers... her haunting blue eyes never stilled for long.

He tried to make sense out of the chaos, to order his memories, but they lay scattered one atop another, blinding, transparent, one merging with the next, and the next, until there was no differentiation... Sarah died a thousand times in his arms... Josette screamed endlessly as she fell into eternity... and Angelique laughed.

He again reached out, his hand brushing over the plush cushioning of the interior of the coffin. Then awareness returned to him completely, as it had a score of times before, and he cried out from pain and frustration. He tried savagely to push up at the chained lid, but the presence of the silver cross attached to its interior prevented even that, burned his hands before ever he touched it. He twisted about, his body tormented by the need for blood, and cast his thoughts out, as he had many times before, hunting for a receptive mind...

He came to again, tense and alert, sensing the presence of another close by. The sounds came to him acutely clear - the slow, ponderous scraping as the secret door slid open; the first rattle of the chains encircling the coffin, the screech of breaking metal as the thump of a crowbar tore them away, the dull rattle as the chains hit the ground... and then the final creak as the coffin lid was raised. A thin shaft of light entered, blinding him, but guided by the instinct which drove him surely to blood, he reached out with both hands.

The man screamed as Barnabas grabbed his throat and arm. With one rapid jerk, Barnabas had the man's wrist to his mouth, and, sinking his fangs carelessly into the flesh, began drinking greedily, casing the awful need. He feasted, then reluctantly released his grip. The man crumpled to the floor, his eyes glazed over, his slack jaw twitching. Barnabas Collins rose from his prison and looked around.

The room was as he had remembered it. He glanced back at the coffin, then jerked his head away as he caught a glimpse of the gleaming silver cross. He took one hesitant step, then another, and went out into the main room of the mausoleum.

The sight of the three crypts stopped him. Through the barred gates he could see a section of the cemetery, and above, in the sky, a thin sprinkling of stars. He turned, and the tombstones caught his eye .. .'Sarah Collins d. 1796'... 'Naomi Collins d. 1796'... He reached out and traced the carving of his mother's name with a trembling hand. He remained there for a moment, then turned his gaze to the last tombstone. 'Joshua Collins d. 1830'.

 **1830.**

He leaned heavily against the wall, his mind frozen by the import. 1830... over thirty years since he had been imprisoned in his coffin… and he still was as he had been. 1830.

He looked again at the stone and noted with blank horror that the names had been worn down by time. Oh, God... how long?

He tried to search his mind, to remember, but everything after that final night in which he had murdered Nathan Forbes, then asked his father to kill him was a blur... the chains that had bound his coffin had become a chain of years, of decades… He remembered brief surges of consciousness through that time; periods in which someone had been close enough to disturb his rest... or the pain of the bloodlust itself had torn him to awareness then back to forced sleep again... and always, always the vision of that silver cross, filled with a cold white fire, had intruded upon his troubled dreams.

Inside the secret room, the man moaned. Barnabas stepped back inside and looked down at him. He was young and of a slight build and his sandy hair was disheveled. Tentatively, Barnabas thought of the man rising and removing that cross from his coffin... and with a groan and an awful effort the man did so. He placed the cross inside his jacket and sank back down again onto the floor.

Barnabas looked at the clothes he was wearing. They were of a different style and much plainer than the clothes he was accustomed to, though they could very well be the clothing of a servant.

"Your name?" he asked slowly.

"Willie Loomis," the man gasped, making no effort to move. His eyes glittered in the dim light with a combination of terror and fascination.

"What year is this?" Barnabas asked.

"1967."

"1967..." Barnabas stood frozen for a long moment, trying desperately to comprehend. Nearly two centuries... how was it possible?

He groaned aloud. He could not continue as he had before; he could not go on like this. It would have been better if his father had granted him the mercy of death. Why had he permitted him to go on? Why?

And yet he must. He felt the blood lust stir in him again, too powerful to be appeased by just what he had taken from Loomis. Attacking the young man again would surely kill him... and he would have need of him for other things. He must go out, find someone or something else to fill his need.

He started to leave, then turned back to Willie. "ls Collinwood still here?"

Willie nodded weakly.

"Then there is still a Collins family?"

"Yes."

So he was not quite alone; there were still some who shared his name.

He left, his long cape swirling about him in the night wind.

He did not, after all, go into Collinsport. It was full of strange lights and strange noises, and he saw vehicles which moved without any horses to draw them.

Retreating-from the village, frightened by what he saw, he stepped onto the main road, noting with surprise that it was covered with an oddly hard substance. A flash of light blinded him, and he moved back into the woods, watching with astonishment as one of the strange vehicles tore down the road at a tremendous rate of speed and making a terrible sound. It flashed by him and was gone; a rush of air following in its wake.

He moved back into the woods, his blood lust fighting with his fear of this strange world. He began to search for something else to appease his need. A small forest animal, bitter though its blood was, eased it for awhile.

He began to wander, fighting the madness that threatened to engulf him. Years... years... had even people remained the same? Or were they changed by their strange devices?

He found himself at the edge of the woods, staring up at Collinwood itself. Some of its windows were filled with those odd lights. As he watched, one of the horseless vehicles pulled up in front of the door, and a young woman stepped out.

She was dressed in an incredibly shocking manner, and her long blonde hair was flowing free. He stared at her in astonishment, and then she disappeared inside the house.

He went, then to the house where he had been born, and stared sadly up at its weathered, broken facade. The windows were gone, or boarded up. The paint, once so pure and bright in the sun, had crumbled with time. Weeds choked the once fair gardens. He stepped slowly forward, and touched the door, thinking perhaps to enter, then backed away. Not now, not yet... He could not bear to think of the ruin that must exist inside.

He found himself at Widow's Hill. Staring down, he watched the waves lap viciously at the jagged rocks below. Was only this unchanged? It would be far better if it had crumpled and fallen into the sea. For a moment he thought he saw Josette, her long hair floating on the shifting water, her blood vanished into the endless sea. He gave a low moan and flung himself forward, to drift and fly free with the winds.

Light neared. He sensed it, though dawn was still far away, and returned to the ancient cemetery. The gravestones were choked with weeds. He knelt by Josette's grave, and righted the stone, which had fallen slightly to one side. He brushed the clinging weeds away, tracing her name with the tip of his finger, then put his hands to his face and wept.

The sky paled. The faint touch of light hurt, and he retreated back into the mausoleum. Through the almost total blackness in the secret room he saw Loomis lying unconscious on the floor. The sound of the man's labored breathing came overloud to his ears, but he did nothing. He shut the secret door and went over to the coffin. He hesitated a moment, memories of those ageless nightmares returning to him. He shuddered.

But it was survival. And he would survive, despite everything. The next night he must begin learning about his new world. There was much to be done.

He got in the coffin and closed the lid.


End file.
